The Looming Crisis In Human Genetics

Just spotted this November-dated essay in The Economist from my friend Geoffrey Miller. He provocatively claims that the crisis (for liberals) will arise in 2010 because GWAS (genome wide association studies) will turn out to tell us less about the genetic causes of mankind's diseases than the genetic variants and associations that underpin widespread genetic variation across races, ethnicities and regions. More trouble for "all men were created equal" ideologues. As Miller concludes: "If the shift from GWAS to sequencing studies finds evidence of such politically and morally perplexing facts, we can expect the usual range of ideological reactions, including nationalistic retro-racism from conservatives and outraged denial from blank-slate liberals. The few who really understand the genetics will gain a more enlightened, live-and-let-live recognition of the biodiversity within our extraordinary species - including a clearer view of likely comparative advantages between the world's different economies." Miller cites the work by Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending (which, together with work they have published in cahoots with John Hawks and Robert Moyzis) is amply referred to in the penultimate chapter of Not A Chimp - that some human groups have experienced a vastly accelerated rate of evolutionary change within the last 10,000 years - whereas others have not.